scholarly journals COMMUNIZATION AND DE-COMMUNIZATION OF TOPONYMS IN KAMYANETS’-PODIL’S’KY

Author(s):  
Ihor Starenkyi ◽  
Yaryna Zaishliuk

The Communisation about change on toponymy map in Kamyanets’-Podil’s’ky during the 1920s – early ХХІ century. Within the first 20 years of Soviet rule, most microtoponyms that did not fit into the ideological system of the Communist Party were renamed – appeared the names of party and military leaders of the USSR, the ideologists of the communist movement. During the next 30 years, some of those objects were renamed again due to the unprecedented scale repressive movement and different kinds of executions of Soviet leaders. After World War II, Communisation toponymy held mainly by the new street names, instead of renaming existing ones. Since the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of dominance of the Communist Party ideology, starts the reverse process – decommunization. Primarilyold name was returned to the historic streets of Kamyanets’-Podil’s’kyin 1990 over 1992-1995. De-communization held by renaming streets of the new city, which bore the names of communist leaders. The new wave of decommunisation is associated with Revolution of dignity and the Law of Ukraine«On the condemnation of Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) totalitarian propagation and ban their symbols». During this period, toponymic objects included in the list of those subject decommunization given new names. If the situation Kamyanets’-Podil’s’ky, streets and lanes provided the names of the dead patriots during the Revolution of dignity and Russian-Ukrainianwar in Eastern Ukraine.

Author(s):  
Vēsma Lēvalde

The article is a cultural-historical study and a part of the project Uniting History, which aims to discover the multicultural aspect of performing art in pre-war Liepaja and summarize key facts about the history of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. The study also seeks to identify the performing artists whose life was associated with Liepāja and who were repressed between 1941 and 1945, because of aggression by both the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany. Until now, the cultural life of this period in Liepāja has been studied in a fragmentary way, and materials are scattered in various archives. There are inaccurate and even contradictory testimonies of events of that time. The study marks both the cultural and historical situation of the 1920s and the 1930s in Liepāja and tracks the fates of several artists in the period between 1939 and 1945. On the eve of World War II, Liepāja has an active cultural life, especially in theatre and music. Liepāja City Drama and Opera is in operation staging both dramatic performances, operas, and ballet, employing an orchestra. The symphony orchestra also operated at the Liepāja Philharmonic, where musicians were recruited every season according to the principles of contemporary festival orchestras. Liepāja Folk Conservatory (music school) had also formed an orchestra of students and teachers. Guest concerts were held regularly. A characteristic feature of performing arts in Liepaja was its multicultural character – musicians of different nationalities with experience from different schools of the world were encountered there. World War II not only disrupted the balance in society, but it also had a very concrete and tragic impact on the fates of the people, including the performing artists. Many were killed, many repressed and placed in prisons and camps, and many went to exile to the West. Others were forced to either co-operate with the occupation forces or give up their identity and, consequently, their career as an artist. Nevertheless, some artists risked their lives to save others.


1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (02) ◽  
pp. 255-268
Author(s):  
Basil Dmytryshyn

Literature in many languages (documentary, monographic, memoir-like and periodical) is abundant on the sovietization of Czechoslovakia, as are the reasons advanced for it. Some observers have argued that the Soviet takeover of the country stemmed from an excessive preoccupation with Panslavism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by a few Czech and Slovak intellectuals, politicians, writers and poets and their uncritical affection and fascination for everything Russian and Soviet. Others have attributed the drawing of Czechoslovakia into the Soviet orbit to Franco-British appeasement of Hitler's imperial ambitions during the September 1938, Munich crisis. At Munich, Czechoslovakia lost its sovereignty and territory, France its honor, England its respect and trust; and the Soviet Union, by its abstract offer to aid Czechoslovakia (without detailing how or in what form the assistance would come) gained admiration. Still others have pinned the blame for the sovietization of Czechoslovakia on machinations by top leaders of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, who, as obedient tools of Moscow, supported Soviet geopolitical designs on Czechoslovakia, who sought and received political asylum in the USSR during World War II, and who returned to Czechoslovakia with the victorious Soviet armed forces at the end of World War II as high-ranking members of the Soviet establishment. Finally, there are some who maintain that the sovietization of Czechoslovakia commenced with the 25 February 1948, Communist coup, followed by the tragic death of Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk on 10 March 1948, and the replacement, on 7 June 1948, of President Eduard Beneš by the Moscow-trained, loyal Kremlin servant Klement Gottwald.


Author(s):  
Robert M. Lichtman

This chapter considers the combination of circumstances and events following World War II that held the seeds of political repression during the McCarthy era. These developments signaled unmistakably that the Soviet Union and its allies threatened America’s security on the international scene. On the domestic front, McCarthy-era repression targeted the Communist Party USA and alleged “Communist front” organizations. Whether a significant internal Communist threat existed in the postwar years was open to question. However, the widespread belief that such a threat did exist, and the related claim that liberal Democrats—New Dealers and their political successors—bore responsibility and could not be trusted to respond adequately, would soon become a reality in American politics. McCarthyism was energized not by opposition to communism but by the linkage of Marxism with liberalism. It was also energized by bare-knuckle partisan political tactics.


Author(s):  
Eren Tasar

Long associated with its aggressive promotion of atheism, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union adopted a nuanced, flexible, and often contradictory approach toward Islam in the USSR’s largest Muslim region, Central Asia. “Soviet and Muslim” demonstrates how the Soviet state unwittingly set in motion a process of institutionalization during World War II that culminated in a permanent space for Islam in a society ruled by atheists. Central Asia was the sole Muslim region of the former Russian empire to lack a centralized Islamic organization, or muftiate. When the Soviet leader Stalin created such a body for the region as part of his religious reforms during World War II, he acknowledged that the Muslim faith could enjoy some legal protection under Communist rule. From a skeletal and disorganized body run by one family of Islamic scholars out of a modest house in Tashkent’s old city, this muftiate acquired great political importance in the eyes of Soviet policymakers, and equally significant symbolic significance for many Muslims. This book argues that Islam did not merely “survive” the decades from World War II until the Soviet collapse in 1991, but actively shaped the political and social context of Soviet Central Asia. Muslim figures, institutions, and practices evolved in response to the social and political reality of Communist rule. Through an analysis that spans all aspects of Islam under Soviet rule—from debates about religion inside the Communist Party, to the muftiate’s efforts to acquire control over mosques across Central Asia, changes in Islamic practices and dogma, and overseas propaganda targeting the Islamic World—Soviet and Muslim offers a radical new reading of Islam’s resilience and evolution under atheist rule.


Semiotica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (208) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Ventsel

AbstractThis article considers the transformations of political rhetoric in Estonian public discourse from the eve of World War II to the retreat of German troops from Estonia in August 1944. Thus, the period under analysis contains the 1940 coup d’état in June, Estonia’s “accession” or “acceptance” to the Soviet Union, and the German occupation of Estonia. The article will analyze how the Estonians’ political and cultural public identity was shaped in political speeches. The analysis will concentrate on the texts that employed the signs important for previous regimes to the introduction and consolidation of new (Soviet and National Socialist) ideological discourses. Using the methods of semiotics and discourse theory, the article will shed light on the metaphorical and metonymical principles of text and meaning construction in the context of power relations. The material of analysis consists of the speeches of the political elite from the 1938, 1939, and 1940 issues of Päevaleht; 1940–1941 issues of Rahva Hääl, and the 1941–1944 issues of Eesti Sõna, and finally, of articles that have been coordinated by the state (published in 1934–1940) in order represent the identity of the Estonian.


Author(s):  
Robert W. Cherny

During World War II, Victor and Lydia threw themselves into organizing and fund-raising for Russian War Relief, organized the Russian American Society, and took active parts in the American Russian Institute, all in support of the Soviet war effort. Becoming more active in the Communist party, they met Soviet consular officials, including at least one KGB agent. The FBI opened a file on Arnautoff. The Arnautoffs applied for permission to emigrate to the Soviet Union but were turned down.


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